Evolutionary Physiology and Behavior

A synthesis of the evolutionary feedback between physiology and behavior: how physiological systems generate new behaviors, and how behaviors shape physiological evolution. Few traits in biology are as spectacular as behavior. Consider birds that perform elaborate dance numbers on the forest floor to attract mates or lizards that trap air bubbles on their heads to dive underwater and evade predators. Throughout much of the late twentieth century, comparative physiologists proposed a series of influential ideas about how the internal workings of organisms—metabolism, neuromechanics, hormones, biomechanics, and other physiological systems—shape the evolution of behavior. At the same time, many evolutionary biologists argued that behavior serves as a crucial filter through which organisms experience natural selection, in turn shaping the evolution of physiological systems. Despite their conceptual power, many of these ideas proved difficult to test at the time. Today, that landscape has changed dramatically. Advances in genomics, physiology, neuroethology, and phylogenetics have caught up with foundational concepts, allowing scientists to revisit and restructure classic ideas with unprecedented precision. This edited collection, Evolutionary Physiology and Behavior, by Martha Muñoz and Matthew Fuxjager brings together contributions from a new generation of scientists, all of whom are leveraging this methodological revolution to tackle classic concepts with new vigor, integrate and synthesize among disciplines, and envision new connections and fresh ideas. The result is a synthesis that both reexamines classic ideas and points to new directions for understanding how organisms evolve.